The failure of Western allies to rally around Canada in its dispute with Saudi Arabia risks luring the kingdom into a false belief that economic sanctions will shield it from, if not reverse mounting criticism of its human rights record and conduct of the war in Yemen. It also risks convincing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that acting with impunity will not impinge on his efforts to attract badly needed foreign investment.

The Saudi-funded centre was established during a visit to Malaysia last year by King Salmanto project the kingdom as a leader in the fight against political violence and the promotion of peace. The establishment of the centre constituted a shift in Saudi Arabia’s soft power strategy that for decades was premised on generous global funding of ultra-conservative strands of Sunni Muslim Islam.

The centre would have also helped extend Saudi influence in Southeast Asia by bringing together Islamic scholars and intelligence agencies in an effort to counter extremist interpretations of Islam in cooperation with the Saudi-funded Islamic Science University of Malaysia, and the Muslim World League, a Saudi governmental non-governmental organization that long served as a vehicle for global propagation of ultra-conservatism.

The spat follows similar incidents with Sweden in 2015 and Germany in November of last year and is not dissimilar to approaches adopted by other autocracies like China which has responded similarly on issues such as Taiwan, the South China Sea and the deployment of a US anti-missile system on the Korean peninsula.

Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador to Sweden after Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström criticized the kingdom’s human rights record, including the sentencing and flogging of Badawi, and cancelled an arms agreement.

The Hariri incident as well as Saudi lobbying against US President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, President Donald J. Trump’s decision to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and what veteran Middle East journalist Brian Whitaker described as “hurling abuse at Qatar” puts Saudi complaints about interference in its internal affairs on thin ice.

In an editorial, The New York Times noted that the Saudi measures against Canada were “the kind of move that, in the past, would have immediately elicited a firm, unified opposition from the West. So far, there’s hardly been even a whimper of protest.”

In effect, the Saudi attempt to bully governments into refraining from criticism constitutes an attempt to curtail the sovereignty of others by dictating to them what they can and cannot say.

To the kingdom’s detriment, it also blows incidents out of proportion that otherwise would have likely gone unnoticed. Few would have taken note of Horak’s comment on Twitter had Saudi Arabia not put a glaring spotlight on them.

The Saudi assertion that Canada had interfered in its internal affairs ignores the kingdom’s legal obligations as a signatory to various international human rights treaties that override national sovereignty as well as its role in the United Nations Human Rights Council that operates on the principle of governments monitoring and criticizing each other’s human rights record.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who last year went into voluntary exile in the United States despite being critically supportive of Prince Mohammed’s social and economic reforms and having close, long-standing ties to the Al Saud family, warned that Saudi Arabia was in effect cutting off its nose to spite itself.

“Saudi Arabia simply cannot afford to alienate any other sections of the global community in the midst of its unpopular military engagement in Yemen… Most importantly, Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation requires more friends than enemies. For MBS to achieve the economic and transformative vision that he espoused on his foreign tour, he needs to use ways and means that investors are accustomed to. If business executives fear a backlash over any possible criticism regarding their investment, the new vision of Saudi Arabia would be in serious jeopardy,” Khashoggi said referring to Prince Mohammed by his initials.

James Dorsey

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario, Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa, and the forthcoming China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom.

2 Comments

It’s all about money! The US politicians can easily be bought out directly or indirectly by foreign money! Money either is contributed to the campaigns directly or in the way of kickbacks from the MIC through arms sales agreements to those countries that could afford them but don’t know how to use them, like Saudi and UAE!

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